Women of Promise

  Shakespeare wrote "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."  I am not quite convinced (like Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables) that a rose would smell quite as beautiful if it were called a thistle or a skunkcabbage. 😆     When we name our children, we often think long and hard about what this child will be called for the rest of their lives.  Perhaps it is a beloved relative's name, or the name of a special person or place.  Often we research the meanings and choose one that reflects a positive image or message.  Maybe we just like the way the name sounds when combined with a middle or last name.       Depending on who you read, there are somewhere between 200 to 350 (possibly more) different names for Jesus in the Bible!  What we must understand is in the Hebrew culture of Biblical times, names were much more than just a title.  Names conveyed a description of who or what that person was.  For example, ...

      Do you ever struggle to know what to pray?  I do. God hears our heart. We can pour out our feelings to Him. Praise God for His Spirit who takes our feeble words and thoughts and brings them to the Father. However, there are many times when words fail to come. What do I pray when I don't have a clue what God's will for this situation or person may entail?     Something that I have been challenged to learn lately is to pray Scripture.  What a blessing this is!  First, this requires me to be reading His Word. I must be familiar with Scripture. Time spent in God's Word is always a blessing. I learn of my Savior as I am searching.     Next, I have great confidence that my heart and spirit are aligned with His will when I am praying the Words of God. So much of the Bible is the records of the prayers and heart-cries of Christ, or types of Christ. He is our model in all things, including prayer.    How does this work? ...

I am resharing this post from several months ago. I needed to revisit this truth myself and pray it blesses you as much as it did me.     I read something this week that I do not recall hearing in this way before.  It shook me to the core and I was amazed at the all encompassing presence and glory of God in a brand new way.  After researching it some and confirming that the information was accurate and not merely a "feel good" inspirational segment, I have been meditating on the truths shared whenever I had some moments to reflect.  It has brought me to tears of joy and adoration.  It has caused me to weep over the lack of knowledge I have of who our God is and exactly how much He is concerned with the fact that we are made in His image.       First, I would like to share the short piece writing that rocked my world this week: There was a moment when Moses had the nerve to ask God what his name is. God was gracious enough to answer, and ...

       Ephesians 5:25 is the passage that most women get excited to hear taught. Their thoughts go something like this: "Yes!! This is how my husband should be. He NEEDS to hear this!! Preach it, Pastor!"    Today I wanted to share something from this passage that was convicting for me, as a woman.  I want to look at the last part of verse 25. just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her     Yes, this verse is directed at instructing the men to love their brides as Jesus loves, but I was led to think for a bit on the magnitude of how much Christ loved the church.  It was so much that He gave His life for her! He LOVES the church! The church is His Bride. There are many more evidences of this in Scripture.      Thinking about another verse brought me to my knees again. Romans 8:29 tells us that God called us to be "conformed into the image of His Son."  In other words, if we are born again, we should be ...

       A favorite Bible story of mine, as a child, was the story of Naaman. This short story is found in 2 Kings chapter 5.  I was pointed to meditate on Naaman's wife's servant girl this past week in a book. This little girl is memorialized in the Bible for speaking one sentence. What an impact that one, small act of faith made on all of History!     This girl is "young" from the description we are given in 2 Kings 5:2. She was taken captive by "bands of raiders from Aram" and ended up as a servant girl to Naaman's wife. Naaman was the commander of the army for the king of Aram. I cannot imagine the fear and trauma that this girl endured as she was ripped from her home by strangers. Who knows what all she was subjected to during that event? All we know is that she had faith that Elisha could heal Naaman. Despite the fact that Naaman was her captor, she had compassion and desired to help him. She speaks up and says, "I wish my master would go see th...

            Trusting God is a lesson we must learn over and over again. He forces us to rely on Him in so many aspects of our lives, because He knows that when we finally realize that He is the one in control, we can find the peace and joy that He longs to give us.  As long as we are trying to "fix" things on our own, or trusting in our own strength, we miss out in that true fulfillment that comes from complete rest in the Creator of everyone and everything.      Finances is one area that we can more easily see this concept at work.  Recognizing that our daily bread comes from the hand of God maintains our focus on stewardship of His resources, as our pastor has been teaching us this month. This is an area in which He demands complete surrender and trust.      The areas in which I have been challenged with most recently are trusting God with my time management and  Mount Everest -sized "to do list". Sometime...

       Our bodies need a variety of nutrients to operate well.  A diet consisting of only fruit would not be very good for anyone's health -- even though fruit is a delicious and healthy food that God has given us to enjoy and use. A baby may drink only milk for a time, but it needs something more substantial as it grows. As we learn more about how our individual bodies function, we learn how important it is to eat at least something from most of the different food groups. Each one provides essential vitamins, protein, fiber, or cell-building elements that help our bodies operate as God intended. Children tend to have a few select foods that they will eat, but most expand that selection as they grow (some more than others!!). If we are convinced of the vital importance of a certain food, often we can even develop a taste or desire for it that we may not naturally have.      This analogy applies to the Word of God. The whole Bible is God's Word and...